Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Home Front, Frozen in Time

Take a good, close look at this picture.  Click on it so you can see it better.  With the sharp detail and superb color, it's almost like you're right there.  Would you believe that every single person in this picture is either dead or very old?

You can't tell by the excellent quality of the photo.  We are used to looking at either black and white or grainy photos from this era.  But if you look closely at clothing, hairstyles and technological devices, you can see that this Kodachrome transparency was snapped decades ago.  October 1942, to be exact: at the North American Aviation plant in Inglewood, California.  These plant workers are watching a lunchtime airshow.  

For more amazing images from wartime America, see here.


H/T Adrienne's Corner.  (By the way, American aviation hero Pappy Boyington was from Adrienne's neck of the woods.)

4 comments:

  1. Baa Baa Black Sheep, later becoming Black Sheep Squadron, was one of my favourite TV programs when a boy - Robert Conrad as Maj. Boyington. Really, really liked the intro and always looked forward to the dogfight scenes with the gull-winged Corsairs. I even bought the book penned by Boyington, who was quite a rough character from what I recall.

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  2. Yep, I too watched that show. The real veterans of the Black Sheep Squadron, of course, said life in the Pacific was not the continual party punctuated by dogfights that was depicted in the show.

    I have seen a Corsair at the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa. I'm amazed a full-grown man could fit into the cockpit of one of those!

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  3. Not just hairstyles date it -- the healthy size of people, too.

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  4. True, New Sister -- none of the women are size .003.

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